Shimano front derailleur?

Question

any good site for how to adjust front derailleur...I just had a new one installed and it was working great...but that was 200 miles ago and now it clicks a lot and doesn't change gears well (front gears)...tne place that installed it is far enough away that driving there sort of defeats the purpose of using a bike more...I need to understand how to adjust things

Answer 1

DO NOT TOUCH THE LIMIT SCREWS. These things don't move out of adjustment.

Instead, check for cable adjustment.

1) Shift the front derailleur into 1 and the rear derailleur into high gear (both onto smallest cogs);

2) Inspect the front derailleur cable where it is bare. Is there slack in it?

3) If so, you need to remove the slack. Either loosen the cable anchor bolt, pull the cable through and retighten or use the barrel adjuster on the end of the shifter to remove the slack.

Answer 2

You'll notice 2 screws on the top of the derailleur. Looking towards the front of the bike, the right s***w adjusts the maximum travel stop (to the outside) and the left s***w adjusts the minimum stop (inside). Put your selector to gear 3. That should loosen the cable. let the derailleur travel out to its limit. Turn the pedal a couple of times to see if there is any scraping. adjust the outside s***w until the scraping stops and the chain is travelling nicely on the largest cog. You might need to adjust the cable at this point as you will probably have too much slack. New cables stretch a bit in the early part of their life.

Next select gear 1 and turn the pedal until the chain slips onto the smallest front cog. adjust the inside s***w until the derailleur is making no noise just as you did for the big cog. After this you should be good to go. Test ride using all your gears and fine-tune as necessary. If the gears are skipping then finetune using the cable adjustment at the handlebar selector.

Answer 3

When new, cables do a tremendous amount of stretching.  Bicycle manufacturers realize this and put barrel adjusters on your bike to allow you to keep your derailleurs operating properly.   If you follow the path of the cable from the shifter to the front derailleur, you'll find a barrel adjuster along the way.  (Your rear derailleur and brakes have adjusters, as well.)

Depending on how your front derailleur is constructed, there is likely to be some slack in your cable when you are on either the big ring or the small ring.  If there is some slack, turn the adjuster about 1/2 turn counterclockwise to tighten the cable and see if your noise goes away.  You can repeat this a couple times until it is perfect.

Another respondent gave you instructions for setting the low and high stops.  Usually, these only need to be adjusted if your chain is dumping off either the inside of the little chain ring or the outside of the big chainring.

Here is some information on the Parktool Website about how to adjust the front derailleur:

http://parktool.com/repair/readhowto.asp...

You should most carefully read the part about "index" adjustments.

Hope this helps.

I suspect your front derailleur cable has

Answer 4

Here's a very good guide on adjusting derailleurs (scroll to the bottom half for the front derailleurs).  http://sheldonbrown.com/derailer-adjustm...

Hope this helps.